'Unseen' News and Views
1 August 2022 (Human Rights Watch)* — “We didn’t know it was the Libyans until the boat got close enough and we could see the flag. At that point we started to scream and cry. One man tried to jump into the sea and we had to stop him. We fought off as much as we could to not be taken back, but we couldn’t do anything about it,” Dawit told us.
Establishment journalists and politicians are despairingly asking: Why did we fail in our well-meaning efforts to help the Afghan people? What were our mistakes?
Wrong questions as they ignore the first mistake: creating the Taliban.
William T. Hathaway
The USA’s attempts to dominate Afghanistan and its resources began 40 years ago when Jimmy Carter in one of his last acts as president approved a CIA plan to overthrow the Afghan government.
That government was no more dictatorial than others in the region, and it was implementing most of the humanitarian programs the USA later claimed it wanted to do: Women had equal rights and access to education, the country had freedom of religion and a well-functioning healthcare system.
The rural infrastructure was being improved, and the standard of living was increasing. But the government was communist, and that meant it had to go, no matter how many people had to die.
– Colonial-style currency board arrangements have enabled continuing imperialist exploitation decades after the end of formal colonial rule. Such neo-colonial monetary systems persist despite modest reforms.
In 2019, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio accused France of using currency arrangements to “exploit” its former African colonies, “impoverishing Africa” and causing refugees to “leave and then die in the sea or arrive on our coasts”.
Anis Chowdhury
Neo-colonial CFA
As France ratified the Bretton Woods Agreement on 26 December 1945, it established the Colonies Françaises d’Afrique (CFA) franc zone, enabling France to update pre-war colonial monetary arrangements.
The ostensible intent of the ‘Franc of the French Colonies of Africa’ (FCFA) was to cushion France’s colonies from the drastic French franc (FF) devaluation required to peg its value to the US dollar, as agreed at Bretton Woods.
A protest by Ocean Rebellion against deep-sea mining, Rotterdam, February 2022 | Zuma Press Inc / Alamy Stock Photo
Mamadiang Mballo and Fatoumata Kandé both work as beekeepers and are finding new ways of working together after attending a gender-sensitive, FAO farmer field school training. ©FAO/ Yacine Cissé
“Beekeeping in Senegal has traditionally been considered a man’s job. The training helped me understand that I too can contribute and make a difference.”
As a member of the local cooperative, Coopérative Agroalimentaire de la Casamance – Miel (CAC/Miel), Fatoumata’s husband, 52-year-old Mamadiang Mballo, has practised beekeeping for over 15 years.
“With the increase in food prices across the world, many refugee families are struggling to meet their basic needs on a daily basis,” said Dominik Bartsch, UNHCR Representative in Amman.
“There is of course food assistance provided, but overall, household incomes are declining rapidly and we’re seeing the level of poverty increasing in the camp.”
(UN News)* — The arbitrary shutdown of hundreds of civil society organizations in Nicaragua is deeply concerning and will have a chilling effect on activists and human rights defenders across the country, UN-appointed independent human rights experts said on Friday [29 July 2022].
In a letter to the Nicaraguan Government last Monday, the group of 16 UN experts upheld that the action “represents a clear pattern of repressing civic space”.
The UN experts echoed a statement earlier this year by the High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding the crackdown. They expressed shock over the extent of the shutdowns by the National Assembly at the request of the Government – counting more than 700 closures, 487 in just the past month.
Due to its structure, methane traps more heat in the atmosphere per molecule than carbon dioxide (CO2) making it 80 times more harmful than CO2 during the 20 years after it is released into the atmosphere.. Credit: Bigstock
One of them, launched by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), focuses on the dangers of what it calls: “secret methane leaks.” Methane is a colourless, odourless gas, responsible for more than 25% of the global warming the Earth is experiencing today.
(UN News)* — The UN Committee against Torture on Friday [29 July 2022] concluded its current session by releasing findings on Botswana, Nicaragua, the State of Palestine and the United Arab Emirates.
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The findings highlighted positive aspects of each country’s implementation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as well as concerns and recommendations.
Botswana and the Death Penalty
The committee raised serious concerns over excessive and inhuman force concerning the use of the death penalty in Botswana.
From 2019 to 2021, Pukaldi Saswanto did not touch land for 30 months whilst working on a fishing vessel. Originally from Bengkulu, a coastal province in Sumatra, Indonesia, Pukaldi had signed up with a recruitment agency to be a fisher based on a friend’s recommendation.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 